a walk before breakfast
This morning my phone said that it was a "rest day" for everything except for push-ups, and since adding a few pull ups and a handstand against the wall still only brought my workout to six minutes I decided to go for a walk right away. I knew that delaying for breakfast first risked not heading out at all, so off I went.
We had a dusting of snow the other day, and the temperatures are still happily cold--it has been nine days in a row of decent (read: below freezing) temperatures, and my phone thinks that they will stay decent for at least the next nine days. I am cautiously hopeful that winter has finally arrived, and might even last a reasonable amount of time this year.
The walk was lovely--the sky was hinting at the red stage of sunrise, the trees are all still dusted with white. The ice between here and the nature reserve has frozen in layers, so occasionally when one walks on it one breaks through the thin upper layer to the more solid layer several cm lower. I could see by the tracks that the deer have the same issue. However, the strength of the upper layer is variable, so this happens only randomly.
Yesterday, lord_kjar's birthday, was a nice day. I woke up earlier than planed, but that was a good thing, because that gave me time for my morning work out before making a fruit salad and decorating the birthday cake, which he decided to do as two two-layer cakes, rather than one four layer. That worked out well, since one of the fillings he wanted was a custard like substance made from a boxed mix, and I have no interested in that sort of thing. So I ate from the cake with one raspberry-banana-cream layer and one strawberry-cream layer (both were frosted with whipped cream and decorated with sliced fruit and berries). While I did that they decorated the other two smörgåstårtas, and we managed to get nearly done with the clean up before his parents arrived, with two of his nieces who are staying with them just now. We visited for a while, then sat down to taste the birthday cakes and sandwich cake about the time his brother and his wife arrived.
We had a nice time visiting with family (and letting the girls play with most of the musical instruments in the house), but then my early morning caught up with me, so I took a short nap in the bean bag chair before the SCA and larp friends arrived. They arrived around the time I was hungry again, so I had a second serving of everything. We got many compliments on both the birthday cakes and the smörgåstårtas.
After they left we all took a nap, and when we got up we started taking apart the old school piano that he has had since before we met. It isn't in very good shape, and doesn't sound near as nice as the piano his sister gave us last year. We know that it is hard to give away pianos these days, and there are usually some available on blocket, and it is solid wood construction. Therefore we decided it makes more sense to just take it apart and use the parts for other projects. Now we can move the good piano to that spot, and free up the other place for bookshelves, which will free up that spot for C's project shelves when she moves in next month.
We had a dusting of snow the other day, and the temperatures are still happily cold--it has been nine days in a row of decent (read: below freezing) temperatures, and my phone thinks that they will stay decent for at least the next nine days. I am cautiously hopeful that winter has finally arrived, and might even last a reasonable amount of time this year.
The walk was lovely--the sky was hinting at the red stage of sunrise, the trees are all still dusted with white. The ice between here and the nature reserve has frozen in layers, so occasionally when one walks on it one breaks through the thin upper layer to the more solid layer several cm lower. I could see by the tracks that the deer have the same issue. However, the strength of the upper layer is variable, so this happens only randomly.
Yesterday, lord_kjar's birthday, was a nice day. I woke up earlier than planed, but that was a good thing, because that gave me time for my morning work out before making a fruit salad and decorating the birthday cake, which he decided to do as two two-layer cakes, rather than one four layer. That worked out well, since one of the fillings he wanted was a custard like substance made from a boxed mix, and I have no interested in that sort of thing. So I ate from the cake with one raspberry-banana-cream layer and one strawberry-cream layer (both were frosted with whipped cream and decorated with sliced fruit and berries). While I did that they decorated the other two smörgåstårtas, and we managed to get nearly done with the clean up before his parents arrived, with two of his nieces who are staying with them just now. We visited for a while, then sat down to taste the birthday cakes and sandwich cake about the time his brother and his wife arrived.
We had a nice time visiting with family (and letting the girls play with most of the musical instruments in the house), but then my early morning caught up with me, so I took a short nap in the bean bag chair before the SCA and larp friends arrived. They arrived around the time I was hungry again, so I had a second serving of everything. We got many compliments on both the birthday cakes and the smörgåstårtas.
After they left we all took a nap, and when we got up we started taking apart the old school piano that he has had since before we met. It isn't in very good shape, and doesn't sound near as nice as the piano his sister gave us last year. We know that it is hard to give away pianos these days, and there are usually some available on blocket, and it is solid wood construction. Therefore we decided it makes more sense to just take it apart and use the parts for other projects. Now we can move the good piano to that spot, and free up the other place for bookshelves, which will free up that spot for C's project shelves when she moves in next month.